Young Lives eBook

“God bless me, yes, certainly,” said the
editor; “you’re welcome to the lot, if
you care to bring a hand-cart. Good-bye, good-bye.”

And Henry slipped his poor little neglected volume
into his pocket. On how many dusty tables, he
wondered, was it then lying ignominiously disregarded.
Well, the day would come! Meanwhile, he had his
first batch of books for review.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE WITS

There now remained the gathering of wits fixed for
the evening. His publisher had asked him to dinner,
but he had declined, from a secret and absurd desire
to dine at “The Cock.” This he gratified,
and with his mind full of the spacious times of the
early Victorians, he turned into the publisher’s
little room about nine o’clock to meet some of
the later.

There was no great muster as yet. Some half-a-dozen
rather shy young men spasmodically picked up strange
drawings or odd-looking books, lying about on the
publisher’s tables, struggled maidenly with cigars,
sipped a little whisky and soda; but little was said.

Among them a pale-faced lad of about fifteen, miraculously
self-possessed, stood with his back to the chimney-piece.
But soon others began to turn in, and by ten the room
was as full of chatter and smoke as it could hold.
Not least conspicuous among the talkers was the pale-faced
boy of fifteen. Henry had been sitting near to
him, and had been suddenly startled by his unexpectedly
breaking out into a volley of learning, delivered
in a voice impressively deliberate and sententious.

“What a remarkable boy that is!” said
Henry, innocently, to the publisher.

“Yes; but he’s not quite a boy,—­though
he’s young enough. A curious little creature,
morbidly learned. A friend of mine says that he
would like to catch him and keep him in a bottle,
and label it ’the learned homunculus.’”

“What dialect is it he is talking in?”
said Henry; “I don’t remember to have
heard it before.”

The publisher smiled: “My dear fellow,
you must be careful what you say. That is what
we call ‘the Oxford voice.’”

“How remarkable!” said Henry, his attention
called off by a being with a face that half suggested
a faun, and half suggested a flower,—­a small,
olive-skinned face crowned with purply black hair,
that kept falling in an elflock over his forehead,
and violet eyes set slant-wise. He was talking
earnestly of fairies, in a beautiful Irish accent,
and Henry liked him. The attraction seemed mutual,
and Henry found himself drawn into a remarkable relation
about a fairy-hill in Connemara, and fairy lights
that for several nights had been seen glimmering about
it; and how at last he—­that is, the narrator—­and
a particularly hard-headed friend of his had kept
watch one moonlit night, with the result that they
had actually seen and talked with the queen of the
fairies and learned many secrets of the ——.
The narrator here made use of a long, unpronounceable
Irish word, which Henry could not catch.